Gay Male Parenting Arrangement Study

Participants may win a $300 night out on the town!

My name is Dwight Panozzo. I’m a gay dad like you, and a PhD candidate at New York University in the Silver School of Social Work. I am doing a dissertation about gay dads and our families.  Very little scholarly research has been done on our families, and what has been done is usually focused on lesbians and how they raise their children.  That’s where you come in.  I would like your help with my research on gay male parenting.  The anonymous questionnaire focuses on how life was for you and your partner before and after the arrival of your first child, how you arrange parenting responsibilities and the impact of bringing children into your family. Your participation and that of gay dads like you will make it possible to add to knowledge about gay male parented families.

Eligibility Criteria – To participate you have to:

-      Be a gay dad who is at least 18 years old.

-      Be living with a gay male partner.

-      Have brought one or more children into your family after the two of you were a couple through adoption, surrogacy,  guardianship, or long term foster parenting after the two of you began to live together.

-      If the ONLY children in your family are from a previous heterosexual relationship you are not eligible to participate in this study.  My apologies to those dads. This study is not for you because almost all that has been written about gay dads has been about your type of family.  This study is for the gay dads who have mostly not been studied.

The questionnaire is online and will take about 20-30 minutes to complete.   It may be completed in one sitting or more than one sitting.  To log out and return to the questionnaire, however, requires that cookies are enabled on your computer.  Instructions for checking your “cookies” setting are at the end of this email. You may log off after clicking to move on to the next page in the questionnaire (this saves your work). When you return to the site by clicking on the survey link in this email, you will be returned to the new page that you clicked to.

The questionnaire has been designed so that it could be completed by one partner on behalf of both of you, but you are also welcome to work on it together.  Or, if you prefer, you could each complete your own copy of the questionnaire.  In this latter instance, you would need to send this email to another computer and click on the link to the questionnaire from the other computer in order to access a second copy of the questionnaire.

Participants who complete the questionnaire are eligible to participate in a lottery sponsored by the researcher for a $300 money order for a “Night Out on Dwight.”  Two lucky participant’s names will be drawn at random for the two $300 money orders at the end of data collection.  Participants will be provided with an e-mail address to enter the lottery after they have completed the questionnaire.  This procedure will ensure that their answers on the questionnaire cannot be directly linked to them. 

If you have any questions, feel free to call me at 201-476-1816 or email me at panozzo@nyu.edu. Thanks for helping to teach others about our families by sharing your experiences and insights about this growing family form that has so far received little serious study.  Please feel free to forward this email to other gay dads who might be interested in completing the questionnaire.

Now, please click on this link to proceed to the questionnaire: 

https://www.novisystems.com/NoviSurvey/n/GayParenting.aspx

Technical Information:

Instructions for checking and/or enabling your “cookies setting” (only necessary if you won’t be completing the questionnaire in one sitting):

For Windows Internet Explorer: Go to Tools, Internet Options, Privacy, Set  to:  Medium, Apply (if you changed the setting) or OK (if the setting was already at Medium).

For Safari: Go to Edit (or the gear icon in newer editions), Preferences, Security, Accept Cookies: Only from sites you navigate to (or “visit” in newer editions), close box.

For Firefox: Go to Tools, Options, Privacy, “Firefox will… Remember History”, OK (note, if you haven’t changed your privacy setting, it is already set to accept cookies).

For Google Chrome: Click on the wrench icon, Under the Hood, allow all cookies, close (note, the default setting for Chrome is to accept all cookies).

If you have any difficulty accessing the questionnaire, please call me at (201) 476-1816 or email me at panozzo@nyu.edu